Photos: See all 54 recreational marijuana shops Denver has licensed so far

It was a Happy Halloween at Lightshade Labs, judging by this photo from the store's Facebook page. But it's probably an even happier March, since two Lightshade branches are among the latest shops licensed by the City of Denver to sell recreational marijuana. In the two-plus weeks since our

An excerpt from William Breathes's January 2012 review: "The waiting room is spacious and sparsely decorated, with an L-shaped leather couch in one corner and various pieces of abstract art and photography from local artists hung around the brick and yellow-painted walls. Other touches, like leaving the wooden ceiling beams exposed and using stained concrete as flooring are in keeping with the industrial-turned-residential feel of the neighborhood."

An excerpt from William Breathes's July 2011 review: "The dispensary's building is a strange, one-story commercial job from the Sixties that's been brightened up from the outside with a coat of neutral tan paint and a spray-painted mural of a blue, elfish creature releasing a handful of butterflies. It's across the street from the Uptown Tavern, which coincidentally has a mini-bowling alley that is ridiculously fun to play when ripped on a good sativa, not to mention a well-ventilated patio. But I digress..."

An excerpt from William Breathes's July 2013 review: "I pulled up and parked between two cars that were still running, full of bodies waiting on whoever was inside to finish up their two-ounce purchases. By comparison, the three grams of medicine I eventually brought home were a drop in the bucket for the shop, which must have cleared about six of the $175 ounces during the fifteen minutes I was visiting."

An excerpt from William Breathes's May 2013 review: "Medicinal Oasis has a tiny blue lobby with a long couch taking up half the room. It felt like the cramped interior of a sailboat -- though I'm not sure if that was intentional or just a by-product of a stoned contractor misjudging waiting-room space during the build-out. In the corners of the room were tiny ship models, in case you didn't get that you're leaving Denver for a tropical oasis by the sign out front along strip-centric East Evans Avenue."

Number 48:New Broadsterdam

2568 South Broadway Denver, CO 80210

An excerpt from William Breathes's January 2013 review: "Minus the cop chopper thrown in for humor, New Broadsterdam's waiting room had an appropriately Netherlands-esque thing going on, with pictures of windmills hung on the walls and other Dutch kitsch thrown around for good measure. There's also a huge, village-square-like white lattice pergola set up over the receptionist desk. It fits, though I'm not really sure about the Dutch connection on that one. The other pieces of heavy wooden antique furniture (and motorcycle) they've got sitting in the large, empty waiting room make it feel almost like one of the antique shops a few blocks north."

Continue to keep counting down the 54 recreational marijuana shops licensed by the City of Denver so far.Number 47:Natural Remedies

1620 Market Street Denver, CO 80202

An excerpt from William Breathes's August 2011 review: "Natural Remedies is on the fifth floor of a turn-of-the-century building on Market Street above Sonoda's Sushi. The building has a central staircase and the smell of freshly fried tempura wafts all the way up to the fifth floor, generally overpowering the faint smell of cannabis until you get to the front door of the shop."

An excerpt from William Breathes's June 2010 review: "The lobby here easily qualifies as the fanciest I've seen at a dispensary, even if technically it doesn't belong to Native Roots. To reach the dispensary, I rode a brass-adorned elevator up to the eighth floor, and stepping out into the marble foyer -- with an old-time barbershop across from the elevator doors -- was like stepping into a time warp. But that impression faded as I rounded the corner and buzzed the doorbell that let me into the Native Roots waiting room."

An excerpt from William Breathes's August 2012 review: "Inside, Herbs4You could be the front office for just about any small, private business. Stock office furniture and couches occupy the small, forgettable waiting room, and the only indication that you're in a medical marijuana dispensary is the name of the shop, the secured entryway, and the dozens of Amsterdam-related items hung on the otherwise bare white walls. They range from flags to T-shirts from the various world-renowned coffee shops and seed companies that call the Dutch city home."

Number 41:Amsterdam Cafe

1325 South Inca Street Denver, CO 80223

Continue to keep counting down the 54 recreational marijuana shops licensed by the City of Denver so far.Number 40:Cannamart

An excerpt from William Breathes's May 2012 review: "The shop still occupies the same Cherry Creek North location, tucked away in the back of what looks to be an old apartment or condo complex. There's the same low-key sign out front, and a porch just begging for patients to puff there -- if the laws ever change in the cannabis user's favor."

An excerpt from William Breathes's March 2012 review: "The shop is small, with glass, aluminum and wooden cabinets forming an L-shaped countertop that takes up most of the bud bar. It's a clean space, well-lit and relaxing, with small stools for patients to pull up while taking a look at the buds. The center maintains a simple, mom and pop-ish feel."

An excerpt from William Breathes's November 2011 review: "The MMC wasn't fancy, but it wasn't sketchy or thrown together-feeling, either. Just clean, simple furniture and a flat, basic gray paint job. To the left when I walked in was a cream-colored massage chair like you sit in at the mall for ten minutes but never would actually consider purchasing unless you were really, really baked. Yeah, these guys bought one. (Talk about undercover stoners.) Also on hand was a dining-room table with chairs set up in another corner and out-of-place yet appropriately funky mirrored panels in part of the lobby ceiling."

An excerpt from William Breathes's September 2012 review: "For years, Colorado Alternative Medicine has been known as the place to pick up some of the state's best-grown meds. By December 2010, when I first visited the tiny South Broadway duplex, even growers were known to shop there between harvests. And based on my latest visit, little has changed."

An excerpt from Wax Jones's July 2013 post "Marijuana trimming isn't just an illegal trade anymore:" "When you first walk in to Megatron, the nickname for Pink House's grow facility, the beautiful scent of sativas and indicas can be a bit overwhelming. There are hundreds of small plants perched beneath flourescent lights throughout the hallways and thousands of plants spread out between four different rooms. Every day, the grow house goes through the same repetitive schedule: shuffle hundreds of plants from vegetative rooms to flowering rooms, water and fertilize plants, prune and check flowering rooms, harvest what is ready and send things to the trimmers."

An excerpt from William Breathes's November 2011 review: "Walking Raven has the distinction of being the first place I reviewed for Westword. After my last visit, I wrote that "Walking Raven feels like that hippie [sic] kid's hangout in high school." Now, two years later, the place feels like that high-school hippy has moved on and is now in his first post-dorm house at a pot-friendly liberal arts college in Vermont."

Continue to keep counting down the 54 recreational marijuana shops licensed by the City of Denver so far.Number 30:Patients Choice on Morrison Road

An excerpt from William Breathes's April 2010 review: "Some dispensaries along South Broadway seem to pride themselves on standing out among the antique stores and clothing shops. Wellspring Collective has taken the opposite approach and blends in with the rest of the businesses. Even with competition around almost every corner, owner Morgan Carr thinks the location is a perfect fit for the dispensary. A vocal proponent of the dispensary model, Carr has hosted numerous Denver City Council members and state legislators at his store. 'At the end of the day, I want them to see a shop that is doing it right,' he said over the phone."

An excerpt from William Breathes's January 2014 review: "We first reviewed Good Chemistry nearly three years ago, in March 2011, and not much has changed since then at the thin, narrow Colfax storefront with the frosted glass and New York-style retractable metal security gate hanging above the entrance and huge front window. The tiny reception area/waiting room is a little bit more weathered, and there's a new, pretty awesome oil painting of a Cthulhu-esque octopus creature that the owners managed to match up with the red vintage theater seats they've had since day one."

An excerpt from William Breathes's December 2013 review: "Other than the skunky odor wafting around the sidewalk out front, the green awning at Colorado Harvest is the only real indication that the tan building is a grow facility and dispensary. The rest of the block is equally nondescript and industrial: An auto salvage yard sits across the street, and the shop is flanked by the Talking Book warehouse on one side and a gas/fire-extinguisher-tank fabrication shop on the other. There's little drive-by traffic, let alone foot traffic, which is nice if you're still looking to be discreet about where you go for your pot."

An excerpt from William Breathes's February 2012 review: "There's no fancy decor inside. The clinic feels like the prefabbed office for a construction site, with a few hand-me-down leather office chairs lined up around paneled walls, gray utilitarian carpet and a coffee table just big enough to hold a stack of magazines. Not grimy or anything like that, just well-used. A few pot posters and framed photographs hang on the walls, and a TV was on the early news, giving the space a casual, kick-your-feet-up living-room vibe."

Continue to keep counting down the 54 recreational marijuana shops licensed by the City of Denver so far.Number 20:Mile High Therapeutic/Altitude, DBA Altitude

An excerpt from our January 17 post headlined "Patriots fans in Denver for game scoring plenty of legal pot:" "No matter how the AFC Championship game between Denver and New England turns out, the Broncos playoff run will turn out well for Justin Staley. Why? Staley's an owner of Mile High Medical Cannabis, whose location, at 1705 Federal Boulevard, is only steps away from Mile High Stadium. Last week, plenty of San Diego Chargers fans in town for their match-up stopped by the shop to take advantage of legal recreational pot sales -- something that presumably helped them deal with a 24-17 loss -- and visiting Patriots boosters are following suit."

An excerpt from William Breathes's July 2012 review: "Inside, what was either a mud room or the kitchen has been turned into the small patient intake area. There's really not much to the space other than the purple walls and window into the receptionist area, but take a second to check out the old pictures of the building hanging in a frame on the wall near the door. At one time, it looked more like a crack house than the oversized dollhouse it resembles today."

An excerpt from William Breathes's August 2011 review: "Denver's Discreet Dispensary is anything but discreet. Though the huge, old, brown-brick industrial building it occupies off Brighton Boulevard does blend in with the warehouses, auto body shops and junkyards that surround it, the huge green crosses on the front and the smell of skunk in the air from the grow-room vents are a dead giveaway as to what is going on inside."

An excerpt from William Breathes's March 2013 review: "Something kept me there: It's a tossup as to whether it was the skunky smell or the fact that I didn't have time to go anywhere else this week. Either way, I sat around in the county-jail-waiting-room-like entryway until the extremely bubbly and friendly woman behind the tinted glass security window buzzed the door open and told me to go on back."

An excerpt from William Breathes's October 2012 review: "The location means the store is likely to get a lot of student walk-in traffic. At least that's the impression I got after seeing the DU swag hung up on the waiting room walls -- plus I went there a few times when I was in grad school and needed a gram or two for the evening. I never found anything amazing, but neither did I ever walk out empty-handed."

An excerpt from William Breathes's April 2102 review: "It's probably not a place for your hip-hop-hating dad with a red card, but it feels perfectly at home in the heart of a diverse neighborhood populated by everyone from black families who have been in the area for generations to hippies and, lately, twenty-something hipsters and musicians."

An excerpt from William Breathes's July 2012 review: "The bud-bar room is much smaller in comparison to the rest of the shop. Hip-high glass counters with edibles, concentrates and more glass pipes surround you. Bud is kept in large jars on green bookcases behind the counters, with different shelves denoting the various price ranges. The jars also are color-coded for price, but I found it easier to just ask how much each strain was selling for as I looked at it."

An excerpt from William Breathes's May 2012 review: "The shop is located north of I-70 in a warehouse district of Montbello -- about as far northeast as you can go in town and still find a medical marijuana shop. The center is nice, though, with large old trees on the lawns of nearby industrial buildings. Aside from the green "Medicine Man" sign out front, and the neon green cross in the barred front windows, it's not a very obvious dispensary site."

An excerpt from William Breathes's October 2013 review: "The dispensary is down a steep flight of stairs from the sidewalk to the basement of the building. The dispensary takes up the entire floor, tucking patient lounges in between massive structural columns and pushing couches up against the massive painted bricks used for the foundation of the former paper mill. Much like Boulder Wellness in Boulder, the shop has gone for an Eastern Buddhist/Zen theme with low painted chairs, squatting Buddha statues and colorful framed posters with vaguely Hindu symbols. There was also a huge, seven-foot-tall antique-looking ceramic vase painted with what looked like a life-sized crane. In my head, I could see a massive cannabis tree fitting in perfectly."

An excerpt from William Breathes's July 2012 review: "DANK is basically a 400 square-foot green box with a matching leather couch and chairs set up in one corner as a lounge, and a cutout window in the opposite wall that opens into the employee-only bud room. Small, hinge-top sample jars with a few buds each are kept out on display on the counter. To the left of the bud counter is a small glass case filled with inexpensive pipes, papers and assorted marijuana ephemera."

Number 3:The Shelter

4095 North Jackson Street Denver, CO 80216

The Shelter is a Strainwise center. To visit the Strainwise website, click here.

Number 2:The Haven

777 North Canosa Court Denver, CO 80204

The Haven is also Strainwise shop. To visit the Strainwise website, click here.

Number 1:The Grove

74 Federal Boulevard Denver, CO 80219

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Michael Roberts has written for Westword since October 1990, serving stints as music editor and media columnist. He currently covers everything from breaking news and politics to sports and stories that defy categorization.

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